My musings regarding GNU/Linux, GNU/BSD and GNU/Minix. I am in particular partial towards Debian GNU/Linux and Arch GNU/Linux. Generally these are my comments towards topics related to "Free as in Freedom" software and tips for installing and configuring Debian GNU/Linux and Arch GNU/Linux systems on laptops and other generics.

Saturday, October 27, 2012

There are various classifications of the "working" class. When I say working class, I meant everybody. Everbody? Yes. Everybody. Everybody works for "something" It is very difficult to tell the "something" of everybody. The Marxist theory considered only one part of the people who were doing physical work.

Physical work is the result, byproduct or a requirement for the mental processing. By processing I meant everything from an empty gaze to finding the answers about "everything" and "nothing". Work aganin should not be restricted to what people do for money or to extend their existence. Even shifting a position should be taken as work. In fact if we broaden the scope, anything which changes the entropy of the world is work.

But according to me all living beings have to do some sort of "work". Let us limit ourselves to Homo sapiens. My classification would be

1. Generics
2. Specifics

1. Generics: Majority of the worlds population would come into this population. So what do generics do? They do routing jobs which is similar throught their existence on the planet. The job/work the generics do are the result of work done by the specifics. The source of all the generic work can be traced back to the work done by the specifics. Dont ask any examples here. Now, why is the majority of the population doing generic work? Is it that the major work available is generic? Is it because the majority is born that way? Is it because they are brought up in that way? Is it because we are supposed to be like this? Is it because the job/work available in plenty is generic? Is it all of the aforesaid and many other reasons which you may come up? Whatever be the answer, the fact is that majority of the jobs are generic in nature.

How would you label a job generic? A generic job is easy to pickup, Maybe we already have that capability, You can be trained into it, You observe and pickup, In summation they require a minimum of mental effort and more of physical efforts. But we cannot tell all jobs requiring physical effort are generic in nature. But all physical jobs are to be made generic for optimization. Can the world do without generics? No. Just look around, look inside. There are generic jobs to done throught the life of everybody. Specifics also carry out a lot of generics like eating/sleeping/walking, albeit a little lesser. If we talk about industries generics have one more advantage. Generics are like pluggable modules. We can repair a minor flaw and plug it in once again. The same job can be carried out by another man effortlessly by observation, little training or by using the common sense gained over the years. Scientific management gurus and the japanese took the generics to a whole new level, by optimizing. Generic jobs are normally carrried out in mechanical frame of mind.

2. Specifics: This is a very small majority of the population. But, they are the reason for all the generic jobs in the world. They normally carry out a very small portion of generics, only for survival. Specifics break new avenues or take the existing generics and take it to a whole new level. They are not pluggable/replacable that very easily. Negligible portion of specifics are born that way. They normally reach the specific mental level by starting from a generic background. They get paid heavily, But that doesnt mean that they yearn for that. They are more bothered about the environment. Some do want to make a "name". Some others would do it for pure fun. They can make the world a better place and at the same time improve on a negative aspect also. Capable specifics can be doing generic jobs owing to other reasons like ease of the job, no load on the brain or they just dont care.

Why dont "all" generics try to achieve that "specific" state of mind?

My answer would be that "They just dont want to do so"

It is my personal appeal to all the generics(including me) to strive towards the specific frame and make the world a better place and in turn motivate other generics to do so.

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

I would loathe the Macbook pros and see that they were whitey,
clumsy, heavy and awkward looking compared to the other notebooks in the
industry. Of all the notebooks I liked the HP TX1301au for three
reasons

1. It had an AMD Turion x2 processor( A processor developed with notebooks in mind )
2. It had a touch screen
3. It could be converted into what is called a "tablet" today by folding the display over the keyboard.

I
saw this lappy being used by many users. HP had a very good concept but
did not follow up on this( Just exactly what happened to one of the
first professional looking GNU/Linux based touch phone, the motoming or
a1200. It was a beautiful phone with a flavor of linux called the
montavista linux, It was my first smartphone ). But I was happy with my
lappy since It played good with GNU/Linux. Debian GNU/Linux ran on this
beauty flawlessly. It was light compared to other laptops. It was
smaller at 12" compared to other laptops. I went on and succesfully
booted Debian GNU/HURD also on this lappy, but after the initial boot
screen It was difficult. In summary, my lappy was free of all
propreitory software, except for the nvidia driver(I know, I know, RMS
is angry)

It was the "apple" of my eye until Apple released
their Macbook air. OMG what piece of hardware. I was drooling all over
it. That was the best piece of notebook hardware I had set my eyes on.
It was "gorgeous", "drop dead", "Awesome"........ All of a sudden
"Light", "Small" and "Air" had a new meaning for me. I just compared the
weight of my lappy with the air, it was shocking. I compared the looks,
It was like comparing it with Mona lisa and the cave paintings.
Evolution took a long time, as we all agree. But the "Air" was a
"Revolution". A revolution which all others are trying to digest and
cope up. I have still to see notebooks come anywhere near to the
air(There have been a few and as Linus torvalds put it, others will
catch up. But they will "catch up")

If we observe the
Macbook air from its first iteration, nothing much has changed. The
basic chasis is still the same. Changes occur when there are competitors
and are forcing you to a corner. As of now the air leads the lot and
others are catching up.

1. Yes, I know, RAM is soldered ---no upgrade
2. Backpanel is locked by propreitory shaped screws --not to be opened by ordinary users.
3.
No DVD drive --watching movies, opening presentations/documents at
office on cd/dvd not possible(I dont know how many still do....).
4. Only two usb ports --Nowadays, I dont know what is the right number of USB ports required.
5. Runs on proprietory software --A simple bios upgrade can disturb any custom OS on the device.
6.
Hard drive capacity limited --Though on a mid 2011 macbook air, we can
still change the hard drives capacity, since it is not soldered.
7. Battery -- can be changed but at an apple store.

Oh, so many negatives. Let us get to the positives.

1. Incredibly thin/light/compact/portable
2. Unibody aluminium chasis --No creaking
3.
Awesome multi-touch touchpad(A very large one)(Clickpad, to be more
precise) --The feeling of crossover between a tablet and a notebook with
an additional "click" action throught the touchpad
4. Full sized
keyboard --Completely relaxed position of the hands while typing, not to
be disturbed by the touchpad. The touchpad can be made to respond to
only the physical "click", that is, pressing the touchpad down(like
clicking a mouse)
5. Lid opened with one hand only --The hinge
tightness is just right to open with one hand and perfect enought to
hold the display upright.
6. Keyboard backlight -- Intensity of the
keyboard light can be changed via shortcut keys on the keyboard. Makes
using it in dark environments a breeze(something from the smarphones,
especially my sony ericsson mini pro). It is the right place to give sony, credit for the chiclet keyboard.
7.
Magsafe charger --I liked the design of the charger, where it gets
pulled(magnetic) to its charging point as it is brought near to the
charging port(A deft touch, that).
8. Display --The 13.3" screen is just right at 1440 X 900 resolution. It is not the best out there, but ample enough.
9.
Except the fan, No moving parts --It is "silent" most of the time. I
noticed the fan rev up when flash enabled sites are visited. And the
exhaust of the fan is let out at the hinge(I loved this piece of
engineering). So your lap is kept as cool as possible.
10. The icing on the cake is an i7 processor clocking at 1.8Ghz with ondie graphics core and 4GB DDR3 RAM.

As
a whole, I am just awed by the device hardware. All this comes to a
standstill when you will see that it runs Mac osX, which is as
propreitory an OS can get over a community developed code. It does make
me happy(My happiness is nothing compared to that of the Freebsd
community which prides itself whenever its code is being used for
propreitory or "freedom" purposes) that it is using contributions from
the free software community by using freebsd code and the mach kernel
code for the core OS and using other nifty tools like the webkit code
from the KDE project. At the same time, the user is completely locked by
the propreitory layer of UI and graphics libraries. It is difficult to
imagine that the worlds most profit making company is making profits by
leveraging community code and returning near to nothing to the source.

So, how do we "Free" this awesome hardware from the clutches of propreitory software?

Run
windows on it, ha? Installing windows on a macbook air is a breeze. The
drivers are available from apple. Install the OS and install all the
drivers. Thats it. Windows runs beautifuly on this device. Hey, wait, now
we have locked both the windows and dooors. The ultimate lockin.

No,
we are not even considering it. What are the options we are left with?
GNU/Linux, GNU/BSD, GNU/MINIX, ANDROID..... I chose GNU/Linux for the
obvious.

Now,
GNU/Linux comes in many flavors. My favorite flavor has been Debian
GNU/Linux, the universal operating system. In its goal of becoming a
universal operating system Debian cannot cater in particular to a very
small group of elite users having the capability of buying mac
hardware(I do not mean that they wouldnt do it, But it would not be
worth, taking the entire world into consideration). I tried the latest
testing build and failed terribly. But, do not go by my experience.
There are people who have succesfully installed Debian GNU/Linux on a
macbook air. Just search them on the public network.

Come on, then, Let us "free" up this awesome piece of hardware...........................................